Nowadays, many educators use the same methods over and over again in their lessons for students to express themselves and demonstrate their new knowledge. Today’s students want to express themselves in a variety of different ways. They want their academic work to be relevant, engaging and fun.

Below is a diverse list adapted from resources found at fortheteachers.org of potential student products or activities learners can use to demonstrate their mastery of lesson content. The list also offers several digital tools for students to consider using in a technology-enriched learning environment.

Earlier this week, Oxford's Bodleian Library announced that it had digitized a 550 year old copy of the Gutenberg Bible along with a number of other ancient bibles, some of them quite beautiful. Not to be outdone, the British Library came out with its own announcement on Thursday:

This is the slide-deck from my plenary at the 8th TED ELT conference – Surveying the Landscape of CPD at TED – in Afyon – Turkey. The plenary focuses on how teachers can and should use technological resources to access information and expertise to develop their own teaching.

A few years back I shared a delightful article that demonstrated how the Finnish baby box lead to the Finland having the best infant mortality rates in the world. This first article itself is the story now. This great BBC article with geographic themes took hold and the act of this article getting shared around the world inspired similar initiatives--this type of diffusion shows layers and layers of good geography present in this viral phenonomen.

The Padagogy Wheel is designed to help educators think – systematically, coherently, and with a view to long term, big-picture outcomes – about how they use mobile apps in their teaching. The Padagogy Wheel is all about mindsets; it’s a way of thinking about digital-age education that meshes together concerns about mobile app features, learning transformation, motivation, cognitive development and long-term learning objectives.

The Padagogy Wheel, though, is not rocket science. It is an everyday device that can be readily used by everyday teachers; it can be applied to everything from curriculum planning and development, to writing learning objectives and designing centered activities. The idea is for the users to respond to the challenges that the Wheel presents for their teaching practices, and to ask themselves the tough questions about their choices and methods.

"The real impact of makerspaces is long term and hard to grade. These spaces enable experiences that over time can significantly strengthen self-efficacy, eliminate learned helplessness, and build an internal locus of control.

In makerspaces I’ve seen students teach their teachers about new technologies. I’ve seen 1st graders intuit the existence of cartesian coordinate systems just by observing 3D printers move. I’ve seen kids shout “YOU JUST DISCOVERED SOMETHING!” at classmates wearing ear-to-ear smiles. Teams of runny nosed kindergarteners are crafting Mars rovers out of chopsticks and 5th graders have built freaking 3D printed prosthetic hands before my eyes."

Code and programming may not be the most important topics on the planet but it is an area of study that sufferers two major problems. one: an industry with millions of unfilled job positions and two: a world where not enough teachers feel confident to run programming projects. The iPad can offer a solution in these situations.

"Finland’s education system is considered among the finest in the world, as the country produces some of the world’s most intelligent and evolved students. The country has a progressive and successful education system. It is at the top of the international league for literacy and numeracy. Only far eastern countries such as Singapore and China outperform the Nordic nation in the influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings which makes it all the more remarkable that Finland is about to embark on one of the most radical education reform programmes ever undertaken by a nation state – scrapping traditional “teaching by subject” in favour of “teaching by topic”.

"The big reform taking place in Finland is the introduction of a new National Curriculum Framework (NCF), which came into effect in August 2016. The framework sets the overall goals of schooling, describes the principles of teaching and learning, and provides the guidelines for special education, well-being, support services and student assessment in schools.

"The concept of “phenomenon-based” teaching – a move away from “subjects” and towards inter-disciplinary topics – will have a central place in the new NCF. Subject-specific lessons like history and geography are already being phased out for 16-year-olds in the city’s upper schools. They are being replaced by what the Finns call “phenomenon” teaching – or teaching by topic. For instance, a teenager studying a vocational course such as “cafeteria services” lessons, would study elements of maths, languages (to help serve foreign customers), writing skills and communication skills in a holistic manner."

"Without trying to defend or absolve U.S. policy, then, it is worth stepping back to ask what shared historical experiences might have left these four countries — Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen — particularly at risk of violent collapse. The following maps help highlight how, at various points over the past century, historical circumstances conspired, in an often self-reinforcing way, to bolster the stability of some states in the region while undermining that of others."

These maps are not cartographically inspiring, but the it's the historical and political insight that makes them valuable. The goal of this set of maps is to find some underlying causal reasons for political stability(or more importantly instability) in the Middle East. These four maps focus on these key issues:

These maps are not cartographically inspiring, but the it's the historical and political insight that makes them valuable. The goal of this set of maps is to find some underlying causal reasons for political stability(or more importantly instability) in the Middle East. These four maps focus on these key issues:

Most of the time, however, the student work we're looking at is not important in and of itself, but rather for what it can tell us about students—what they can do now, what they might be able to do in the future, or what they need to do next. Looking at student work is essentially an assessment process. We give our students tasks, and from their responses we draw conclusions about the students and their learning needs. When we realize that most of the time the focus of feedback should be on changing the student rather than changing the work, we can give much more purposeful feedback. If our feedback doesn't change the student in some way, it has probably been a waste of time.

There is a bit of an over-simplified definition of feedback at times, as if it is always external. What if an objective is to help students and teachers (for that matter) to learn how to use internal feedback along with external feedback?

These are external obstacles whereby the educator places blame for resisting change or engaging in a growth mindset outside of one’s own responsibility. The result is a fixed mindset of learned helplessness, “I cannot change because the system won’t let me change.” Sometimes educators are creating some obstacles for themselves that in reality don’t exist.

Yesterday we published the article, “Coding for the Common Core – Apps for Integrating Coding With Math and ELA“, in which we shared numerous programmable robots and insights and lesson plans that offer ideas for how they can be used on classrooms teaching various subjects.

Today, we share 15 different iPad apps (many of them are free!) that can help teach coding skills while reinforcing related skills like mathematics, logic, reading, and more! These apps are geared toward students of elementary through middle schools ages.

A great tool for assessment in the 21st Century is the app Explain Everything (iOS, Android, Windows, & ChromeOS). Explain Everything is a unique, interactive screencasting whiteboard app that can be used as a tool for ongoing assessment. It is an effective application with both general education students and special education students and can be used in a variety of content areas. It creates opportunities for dynamic assessment by incorporating audio, drawing, and video functionality.

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